Read A Widow for One Year for Free Online Page A

no longer a member, nor had he advanced to that elite circle of those six boys who comprised the Academy Debating Team. Had he simply given up the outdoors and debate? Marion wondered. (Her boys hadn’t cared for clubs, either.)
    But then she found him, looking aloof among a smug and cocky group of boys who were the editors of—and the principal contributors to—Exeter’s literary magazine, the Pendulum . Eddie occupied one end of the middle row, as if he might have arrived late for the photograph and, feigning a fashionable lack of concern, had slipped into the frame at the last second. While some of the others were posing, deliberately showing the camera their profiles, Eddie was staring the camera down. As in his 1957 yearbook pictures, his alarming seriousness and his handsome face made him seem older than he was.
    As for whatever was “literary” about him, his dark shirt and darker tie were the only visible factors; the shirt was of a kind not normally worn with a tie. (Thomas, Marion remembered, had liked that look; Timothy—younger or more conventional, or both—had not.) It depressed Marion to try to imagine what the contents of the Pendulum might have been: obscure poems and painfully autobiographical coming-of-age stories—artsy versions of “What I Did on My Summer Vacation.” Boys of this age should stick to sports, Marion believed. (Thomas and Timothy had stuck to nothing but sports.)
    Suddenly the breezy, cloudy weather chilled her, or she felt chilled for other reasons. She closed the ’58 PEAN and got inside her car, then once again opened the yearbook, resting it against the steering wheel. The men who’d noticed Marion getting back inside her car had watched her hips. They couldn’t help themselves.
    Regarding sports: Eddie O’Hare was still running—period. There he was, a year more muscular, in both the photographs for J.V. Cross-Country and J.V. Track. Why did he run? Marion wondered. (Her boys had liked soccer and hockey and, in the spring, Thomas had played lacrosse and Timothy had tried tennis. Neither of them had wanted to play their father’s favorite game—Ted’s only sport was squash.)
    If Eddie O’Hare had not risen from the junior-varsity to the varsity level of competition—in either cross-country or track—then he couldn’t have been running very fast or very hard. But, regardless of how fast or hard Eddie ran, his bare shoulders once more drew the unconscious attention of Marion’s index finger. Her nail polish was a frosted pink; it matched her lipstick, which was a kind of pink shot through with silver. In the summer of 1958, it’s just possible that Marion Cole was one of the most beautiful women alive.
    And, truly, there was no conscious sexual interest in her tracing the borders of Eddie’s bare shoulders. That her compulsive scrutiny of young men Eddie’s age might become sexual was, at this point in time, strictly her husband’s premonition. If Ted trusted his sexual instincts, Marion was deeply unsure of hers.
    Many a faithful wife has tolerated, even accepted, the painful betrayals of a philandering husband; in Marion’s case, she put up with Ted because she could see for herself how inconsequential his many women were to him. If he’d had one other woman, someone who’d held him under an enduring spell, Marion might have been persuaded to get rid of him. But Ted was never abusive to her; and especially after the deaths of Thomas and Timothy, he was consistent in his tenderness toward her. After all, no one but Ted could have comprehended and respected the eternity of her sorrow.
    But now there was something horribly unequal between her and Ted. As even the four-year-old Ruth had observed, her mother was sadder than her father. Nor could Marion hope to compensate for another inequality: Ted was a better father to Ruth than she was a mother. And Marion had always been so much the superior parent to her sons ! Lately she almost hated Ted for absorbing his